The dream is that you awaken from a deep sleep, wake up suddenly damp and panicked and are overwhelmed with the sudden feeling that there is a distillation of total evil in this dark strange room with you, that evils essence and center is right here, in this room, right now.

You're all woman Professor. Any man who has hiked the Appalachian Trail, or just been on boy scout campouts, would know that this bug is a harmless leaf walking type bug. When wasps or yellow jackets come around, then you can call for help. Nice narration.

An acquaintance booked a hotel room in the Keys once. He and his new bride (both lifelong midwesterners) opened the door and found it already hosting a considerable party of cockroaches. Aghast, he went back to the desk to complain, only to be told, "Oh no sir, those aren't cockroaches. Those are palmetto bugs."

hi professornice to see an insect featuredin a movie even if it is a beetleyou know you can never trusta beetle because they ll do whateverlooks like one of those outdoorsygardening type beetles who justaren t used to civilized life indoorsand can t even keep his antennae cleanwithout lolling around in pine treesand unlike me i d bet if you ignore himhe will go back to his garden a s a pi won t make too strong a case for my ownoutdoorsy southern cousins who are abit boorish and embarrasing you know we up north won the civil war whichi m reminded of every time i scurry overto nearby memorial hall here in cambridgei m telling you my sort are much moresophisticated for example i dine onfrench cuisine when i find it behindthe stove even though it is a painbut you can see the trouble i taketo appreciate the finer things in life

Last summer, my wife yelled at me to come kill a spider. Now, normally, she is a casual, cold-blooded murderer of objectionable insects, so I knew something was up..

It was a huge-ass wolf spider, as big as my stretched-out hand, as big as a tarantula. (though not as heavy).

I half jokingly said I was afraid to try and kill it and risk pissing it off. And asked her if she might like to try feeding it a little hamburger, befriend it, make it sort of a house pet who could make short work of any other insect intruders...or any bats, birds, or field mice that strayed into the house. And could snuggle up with us on cold nights.....

She gave me a very clear answer.

So out came a big tupperware bowl. Trapped the critter. Then walked a good 200 yards with the Mrs to dump the arachnid I now had named "Wolfy" into a thicket.

To her relief, several days of my opening the door, whistling, and yelling "Wolfy! Come home! Come home, now!" failed to cause it's return..

Of course overseas, there are worse. I stomped a giant centipede once in a darkened tent in Kuwait under dim red light (war-time blackout - Gulf War) over a foot long. Then on picking it up, quite dead, found out it was actually a snake. A highly poisonous Asp snake, it turned out. (Kuwait liaison: "Oh, we have them. Yes. Burrowing asp. But do not worry. They are not that common! The centipedes that may look like them to you unfamiliar Europeans are far more numerous, but not nearly as poisonous.")

The scorpions were worse than the giant centipedes. (The centipedes were not aggressive. Scorpions were of an inclination to strike just as soon as not. And more plentiful than the centipedes, which actually were only out and about for about a week, then disappeared.) Never get into the bunk without shaking out sheets. Never put clothes and boots on without shaking them out. It took me months to get out of the habit of shaking stuff - shoes, boots, and sneakers in particular - once back Stateside..

Here in Northern California we have a charming bug called a Jerusalem cricket. A friend who had only moved to California from the east coast months before, once called me in a panic. There was a huge, grotesque looking creature in her kitchen. Turned out to be a Jerusalem cricket. Evidently they aren't harmful to humans, just freaky-looking. And thankfully rather shy. The one in her house showed up only because there was some remodeling going on and it had been disturbed.

Oh, and palmetto bugs aren't a big deal. Just give them names and treat them like pets and all is well.

They're not like the stinky German or brown roaches, scuttling around like representatives found with cash in the freezer. They're actually very laid back, slow to reproduce, and generally inoffensive, excepting of course that they're roaches.

When we lived in Columbia-Tusculum (been there yet?) we were in this weird micro-climate where we had all these southern bugs and lots of Lazarus lizzard. LOTS OF THEM. Anyway, we also had Southern Ohio's Biggest Bugs. In the basement (hand dug, in 1890) we had enormous "spickets." Never knew exactly what they were, but they looked like this cross between spiders and crickets. So we called them spickets.